


Never the Bride

by Hermonthis



Category: Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Genre: Gen, One Shot, Sorrow, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 05:05:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11821812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermonthis/pseuds/Hermonthis
Summary: "Estella," she says. "Tell me a story. A sad one, one about a woman whose wedding day was never meant to be."





	Never the Bride

**Author's Note:**

> (Written October 2008)

Here she lies on her wedding bed. Her yellowed, ivory dress torn asunder from the wear and tear, her heart shriveled and dried from the torrent of tears belonging many decades ago. The chamber which once kept a beating, living heart of a young noblewoman is now lesser than a pile of ashes dropped on the dusty, marked floor.

A ghostly apparition, frailer than the hand-stitched lace that covers her arthritic wrists, more fearsome as a woman scorned, crooks a finger towards the open doorway leading into the dining room and beckons her daughter.

 _Estella_ , she says. _Tell me a story. A sad one, one about a woman who was tricked out of life and left to waste in the clothes she will wear until death comes to claim her._

Estella remains.

And the pale youth she saved from a world of destitution enters the domain of despair. Comes forward into the dim light. Her child-like cheeks and her piercing, icicle eyes acts as a protective fortress against those who might harm her, those strangers who come into her house and demand payment for their services.

It is never about sentiments anymore, perhaps it never has been. There may be light in Satis House, but never within. It is cruelty that makes her, so Miss Havisham shall repay in kind, starting with Pip. It is better to rend the innocent for the better future, better to separate the hurting heart from the bitter mind. Only the wealth of their purses beckons them to speak, and only she knows the consequences of how important that can be.


End file.
